Campus Announces Plan for Medical School

UC Riverside, which has long wanted to open medical and law schools, announced Thursday that it would soon submit a proposal for a medical school that would not require construction of a hospital.

Chancellor France A. Cordova, who announced the plan to a group of community and political leaders, proposed that a new medical school collaborate instead with existing hospitals in the San Bernardino and Riverside counties region, significantly reducing the plan’s cost.

Cordova said the main impetus for the proposal, which will be formally submitted to a University of California special committee in March, is a recent study projecting a statewide shortage of physicians in the next decade, but particularly in the fast-growing Inland Empire region. She said the area was considered to have one of the state’s lowest ratios of primary-care physicians and specialists per capita.